#breathe

Applicant(s)

Size of team/newsroom:small

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Description

To democratize data critical to savings thousands of lives, IndiaSpend is happy to announce the launch its own network of low-cost sensors to measure the air quality in many Indian cities. We hope to build a large system that can share air-quality data in an open, transparent way, for the benefit of all, including those who run other networks. We do not aim to disprove or counter the data being collated by other networks, including those run by the Government.

What makes this project innovative? What was its impact?

Low-cost sensors are a new phenomenon. Coupling them with general packet radio service (GPRS)-based transmitters, as we have done, is an innovation. In simple language, our sensors can automatically and continuously stream data through a mobile network. Many high-end sensors and air quality measuring devices — apart from the fact that they are expensive — do not usually come with transmission capabilities. Customization of such technology for local conditions is important. There is even a term for this: sensor journalism, broadly a subset of data journalism, which IndiaSpend pioneered in India. In rolling out this network, we are getting close to the source of data and thus eliminating one round of collection errors or interpretations. We consistently benchmark our devices against high-end devices to check and analyse variations.

Technologies used for this project:

Low-cost sensors are a new phenomenon. Coupling them with general packet radio service (GPRS)-based transmitters, as we have done, is an innovation. In simple language, our sensors can automatically and continuously stream data through a mobile network.